Managed Networks has set a new challenge to their staff: How quickly can you run up London’s Tower 42?

On Thursday 1st March they will be putting three teams to the test, along with a number of other participants, in the Vertical Rush event organised by homeless charity Shelter.

Participants will be running (or perhaps walking…) up the 42 floors of the tower to reach the magnificent champagne bar, Vertigo 42, with its fantastic views over the city. Each entrant will be given a chip that will accurately record their race time, with prizes for the fastest times.

With 920 steps (183 meters) to climb to the bar this is not for the faint of heart, but Managed Networks believes in going the extra mile (or extra floor…) in support of a worthy cause. Shelter provides short-term help to those in need while at the same time conducting research and pushing useful policies into real legislative change.

We are proud of our ongoing commitment to helping the homeless having already made a Christmas donation of £2000 to Shelter. We are looking forward to the challenge presented by the tower race and hope to raise a lot more money for this deserving charity.

If you would like to support us with sponsorship then please get in touch with Abdus Sahid (abdus.sahid@managednetworks.co.uk), one of our technical account managers, who is organising our entry in Vertical Rush. We want everyone to work together to make this Shelter’s most successful fundraising event yet.

Like many businesses, we have always given small gifts to clients at Christmas time as a thank you for their custom. This year, when we were compiling the list of recipients and the budget, we asked ourselves whether we could do something better with the money.

Did you know that every two minutes someone faces losing their home? Recent figures show that the levels of homelessness in the UK have risen by 17% in 12 months. No one should have to endure having their lives torn apart by homelessness, especially at Christmas time, and in these uncertain economic times it’s all the more important that we do what we can to help.

Managed Networks decided to make a difference and help those in need this Christmas. We took our gift budget, doubled it, and donated the whole amount – £2,000 – to Shelter, a charity that works to combat homelessness and bad housing. Instead of gifts, our clients will be receiving an insert in their Christmas cards letting them know how they’ve helped alleviate homelessness in the UK.

Tracy Griffin, Shelter’s director of fundraising, said: “We are thrilled that Managed Networks has chosen to support Shelter this Christmas. Every two minutes someone faces the nightmare of losing their home. All the money raised will go towards ensuring that Shelter can reach more people who need our help to stay in their homes this Christmas.”

Ben Rapp (CEO) and Nick Caplan (Chairman) handed over our cheque for £2,000 to Shelter on the 8^th of December 2011. Our donation will prevent twenty families from being unlawfully evicted from their homes. We would like to inspire other small and medium-sized companies to follow our example. We may not have the impressive budget of a big corporate, but we can certainly do something significant this Christmas.

“We wanted to find a way to make a difference and set an example. Homelessness is a real and pressing issue where charity can have an immediate and lasting impact” – Ben Rapp, CEO, Managed Networks.

Riots, protests and inclement weather are just some of the recent business risks we’ve all faced, on top of the usual concerns about fire, flood, theft and employee malfeasance. If you don’t put appropriate protections in place, your business is at real risk. Did you know:

• 93% of companies that lost their data centre for 10 days or more due to a disaster, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
• 94% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss do not survive – 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years. (University of Texas)
• 30% of all businesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year and 70% fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
• 7 out of 10 small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year. (DTI/Price waterhouse Coopers)

You may think that having a backup solution addresses this risk. However:

• 77% of those companies who do test their tape backups found back-up failures. (Boston Computing Network, Data Loss Statistics)
• 50% of all tape backups fail to restore. (Gartner)

Backup is only the beginning of a proper business continuity plan; and then only if its working and tested properly.

The Seminar

Managed Networks invites you to a free seminar covering:

• the difference between business continuity, disaster recovery and backup
• how to assess your requirements and weigh up your risks
• how to design and implement a business continuity plan that’s appropriate and affordable
• how to balance cost, risk and responsibility – including where the Cloud fits in

The Presenter

The seminar will be run by Ben Rapp FBCS CITP CISSP. Ben is a seasoned technology veteran with many years of experience advising clients on IT matters including business continuity and disaster recovery issues. He is CEO of a business in the SME sector and a board member of Intellect, the UK technology trade body.

Date and location

14^th December 2011; 3pm- 5.30pm

Intellect Offices
Russell Square House
10-12 Russell Square
London WC1B 5EE

To reserve your place at the seminar email enquiries[at]mn.co.uk
As places are limited, we advise you to respond as early as possible.

Managed Networks is supporting Jeans for Genes charity to raise money for children with genetic disorder. Jeans for Genes Day is an annual fundraising and this year it takes place on Friday 7th October. It’s very simple- all you have to do is ask people to come to work in their jeans and donate £2.

The idea of Jeans for Genes Day originated in Dorset in the early 1990s. Now Jeans for Genes is a national UK campaign which raises money to change the world for children with all types of genetic disorders. The charity’s main fundraising event is Jeans for Genes Day which takes place annually on the first Friday of October. Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK make a donation to wear their jeans to work or school.  The money they raise helps to fund the care that children need now and the research that could change their lives in the future.

Genetic disorders are caused by an alteration in DNA. This may mean that either a gene or several genes are missing, repeated or in the wrong order. Altered genes can affect a child’s senses, movement, ability to learn or appearance.

For more information visit www.jeansforgenesday.com
You can make a difference simply by wearing jeans.

Summer may be the holiday period but Managed Networks has been busy. There has been a lot going on in our company- we have refreshed our brand, launched new website and increased our presence on social media platforms. We have also worked towards building a strong partnership with Microsoft and Intellect.

Our Values

At Managed Networks we believe that every business should be values-driven, as it provides a focus for everyone. That is why we developed our statement of values and put it in four sentences that define our identity:

• Managed Networks has been providing better IT to SMEs for almost 20 years.
• Our highly-qualified professionals give clear, unbiased advice in plain English.
• We listen to our customers, understand their business needs, and deliver appropriate IT solutions.
• Our world-class customer service is backed by our unique proactive service warranty.

New Appearance

Following on from our thinking about our values, we decided to refresh our brand image to reflect our values. Managed Networks has taken an unusual approach to refresh our brand’s image. We aimed to combine clean design with great functionality. Since we offer solutions that simply work – guaranteed – we wanted this approach to be reflected in our visual identity. Working with talented graphic designers and professional website developers we have created a new website of which we are very proud. Follow the link to explore our revamped image and brand new website>

Intellect Membership

Managed Networks is proud to be a member of Intellect, the UK IT trade body for the technology sector, and to benefit from its wide membership and high standards of professionalism. Our Chief Executive Officer, Ben Rapp, was recently appointed as a non-executive director of Intellect, sitting alongside with senior industry figures from major global IT companies.  Recently we have taken another step in our partnership with Intellect by sponsoring one of Intellect’s conference rooms. We will be hosting a series of practical seminars on key IT and business topics in our sponsored room. Look out for your invitation!

The first seminar is scheduled for 13^th October 2011 and will cover Business Continuity Planning. The seminar will be run by Ben Rapp, CEO at Managed Networks and Fellow of the British Computer Society.

New team member

We are delighted to announce that Sara Newman has joined Managed Networks’ team as Operations Manager. Sara has a background in prog-ramme and project management and is a Prince 2 certified practitioner. She is ITIL-qualified in service management. Sara will drive our continuous improvement program and help us deliver even better service to our customers.

Microsoft Competencies

We are committed to IT professionalism we work closely with top-level IT companies. We have been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 2000, we became a Gold Certified Partner in 2005 and a Microsoft Small Business Specialist soon after. We have just attained a Microsoft Silver level Desktop competency to add to our growing Microsoft Accreditations Portfolio including the Gold Server Platform competency.

Social Media

At Managed Networks we believe that communication is a key to successful relations. That is why we are very active on different communication plat-forms. We want to send out a clear message and keep you abreast of what we have been up to recently.

You can follow us on:

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